


Fall Away

by Raisintorte



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-21
Updated: 2007-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:12:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raisintorte/pseuds/Raisintorte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is a little bitter and Cam, is well, Cam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall Away

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very late entry for machinistm in the sg_flyboys thing-a-thon. Thanks to smittywing and omglawdork for putting up with me, wojelah for beating this into the story that it is, and reccea for doing a coherency check.

It took Cam almost forty-five minutes of hiking and twenty-five minutes of disabling various booby traps to get to John's cabin after the road ran out. He didn't really know what he was doing, coming up to see Sheppard, but Carter had suggested it, and even given him the GPS coordinates, so almost thirty-six hours later, here he was.

He rounded the last bend up the definitely-not-a-path and saw a wood cabin up in a clearing. John was sitting on an Adirondack chair with his feet up on the railing holding a drink. He raised his glass and smirked at Cam."Took you long enough. I really thought that last bear trap was going to get you."

"Shut up, asshole." Cam huffed and puffed the last twenty feet to the porch, dropped his sack on the ground, and flopped into the chair next to Sheppard and swiped the glass from his hand. He almost did a spit-take when he realized it wasn't *just* lemonade, then downed the rest. "You this hospitable to all of your guests?"

"Just the unwanted ones." John picked an already-lit cigar off the table and started puffing. "What are you doing, Mitchell?"

"If I had a clue, I probably wouldn't be here." Cam gave John a wry smile.

John just snorted and started puffing smoke rings "So you're saying you didn't stop by for my charming company and witty personality?"

"Not so much." John didn't respond, and appeared quite content to just sit there, so Cam looked around the property. Beyond the cabin, a line of trees stretched as far as the eye could see. "I always thought you would land by the water."

"Yeah, people are shocked by this place. There's a lake on the back side of the cabin. I've got a dock, a swimming platform, and a small motor boat. After you've had the best ocean view in two galaxies, any ocean view was going to be a let down. So I settled for a small mountain lake."

John offered Cam a cigar and Cam took it. It took a few tries for him to get it lit but soon he was puffing along with John. They sat there in companionable silence for a few minutes, side by side, leaning back in their chairs, legs crossed on the railing. Cam broke the silence, "So, we beat the Ori."

"I heard a rumor to that effect." John wasn't giving away anything. He wasn't exactly being welcoming, but he hadn't tried to use the shotgun resting next to his chair either.

"I figured someone was keeping you in the loop." Cam figured if John really wanted him to leave he would tell him. Sheppard had never really been one to beat around the bush.

"You hungry?" John must have come to some internal conclusion that Cam was welcome, because he stubbed out his cigar and stood up. He gave him a small smile and that was the welcome that Cam had been looking for.

"I just hiked up a god-damned mountain, Sheppard. Of course I'm hungry." Cam followed John into the cabin. The outside of the cabin had been rather plain, beautifully done, but still plain. But where the front was simple, the rest of the cabin was amazing. Cam could tell most of the furniture in the house was hand carved. He walked over to the back window and looked out - Sheppard's "small" mountain lake was gigantic.

"Nice place you got here." Cam wasn't sure exactly what he should do. John had invited him in for dinner, but he hadn't said he could stay. Cam figured he would leave his bag on the porch until he got the lay of the land and figured out if Sheppard was going to let him stay.

"It works." John headed into the kitchen and started pulling out some pots. Cam wasn't much of a cook, but even he could tell that this was no amateur kitchen. "I've got a roast going in the slow cooker. If you're a good boy, I'll share it with you - but you have to work for your dinner. Wash and peel these." John dumped a bag of potatoes on the counter and pointed Cam toward a drawer. Cam could tell that John was warming up to him - he was teasing him.

Cam hadn't made it all the way to colonel without learning how to peel some potatoes along the way, so he took out a peeler and got to work. "How the hell do you get fresh potatoes and all this stuff up here if there's no road?"

"There is - it's just hidden. I tell the invited guests how to get here." Cam couldn't see John's face, but he could hear the laughter behind the words. His status as an uninvited guest had just been forgiven. As Cam finished peeling the potatoes he set them off to the side and John threw them into a large pot of water he had just put on.

Cam paused his peeling for a second to look John right in the eyes. "Would you have told me where it was if I called ahead?"

While Cam was peeling John had walked over to the liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of JD and started pouring two glasses. "Nope." John didn't miss a beat with his response, but Cam wasn't necessarily buying it. John probably would have given him directions if he called. It wasn't like he and John had some complicated history. They were colleagues and friends. Friends who occasionally drank to much (or didn't drink at all) and stumbled back into bed together after a particularly rough day. And after some days that hadn't been rough at all. When you did what they did, relationships weren't easy, so you took what you could and gave what you could. It might not have been enough, but it was better than nothing.

But Atlantis and the Wraith were gone - the Asurans had seen to that. The Asurans were gone - John had seen to that.

Cam hadn't seen John since John resigned his commission two years ago. John had returned from Pegasus a bit more broken than the rest of them. Landry had offered John a spot at the SGC, but he had turned him down flat and took off for parts unknown. Sheppard hadn't been back to the SGC since.

Cam had spent the last two years too distracted by the fight with the Ori to really think about John or what happened, but now that the Ori were gone and the galaxy was righting itself, Cam just wasn't sure what he wanted to do. Cam wasn't sure he was ready to walk away from the SGC, but he wasn't sure he could stay either. Either way, he needed to clear his mind and this was where he landed.

John jolted Cam out of his reverie by handing him a glass a whiskey. Cam took a large sip and leaned against the counter. He wasn't one for sentiment, but sharing a glass of whiskey brought back memories. The slow smile that crossed John's face told Cam that he wasn't the only one remembering times gone by. They stood there, leaning against counters in silence for what seemed like ages. Cam was getting lost in old memories and while he had worked his way from uninvited nuisance to dinner guest Cam wasn't entirely sure where he stood. John's posture was careless and he was smiling, but Cam had seen that smile before fighting just as often as fucking. Cam was about to make a quip, something to break the silence, but then John moved from his careless lean against the sink and pushed him up against the counter and kissed him.

Cam fumbled and set his whiskey glass down on the counter behind him. He put his hands on John's chest and lightly pushed him back. "I didn't come here for this."

John gave him a wry smile and tugged Cam's hips into his. "Sure you did."

* * *

Cam's brain wandered back to reality a few hours later, when he found himself sprawled across John on the kitchen floor. He looked over; John was awake and watching him. He didn't smell the house burning down, so at some point they must have turned off the burners. John was absorbing most of the cold with his back, so Cam was content to lie across him as long as John was content to allow him. The problem with the post coital lying about was it was making Cam think about why he ended up sprawled across Sheppard on a kitchen floor in the middle of no where.

"After Atlantis fell, why didn't you stay with the SGC?" Cam felt John tense up at the question. He was probably killing the moment but neither of them had ever really been the screw and cuddle type.

"Why? To spend the rest of my day playing den mom to whatever group of clumsy scientists Landry decided to stick me with that week? No Thanks." John tensed up again and then relaxed again.

"It didn't have to be like that." The position they were in was getting a bit hard on Cam's back, so he shifted and John followed until they were laying side by side.

"But it was. Atlantis, Atlantis needed me. Earth already had its defenders. Besides - if you'd really needed me, you knew where to find me." Cam didn't have anything to say, so he just laid there, taking in the hard coldness of the floor and the warmth of John. John shifted awkwardly on to his side, taking some of the warmth with him, "Why are you here, Mitchell?"

Cam propped himself up on his arm and looked at John. "You walked away. You didn't look back. And you made it look so easy." Cam knew it couldn't have been easy, but he had to ask.

"Easy? I wish." John gave a bitter laugh and Cam had his answer. John looked away from Cam. "Walking away was _anything_ but easy. But it was all I could do. - Before Atlantis I was playing out the end of my career as a taxi driver in Antarctica. Going to Atlantis gave me back more than the career I thought was gone. . . . It gave me a home and a family." John shifted on to his knees snatched a pair of boxers from the floor. Cam was pretty sure they were his, but he wasn't going to say anything.

John's body language was closed off with memory. "The SGC was just enough different and just enough the same to remind me of the family and home that I lost." John paused for a second and a pained looked crossed his face. "It took a while but I'm finally content. If you're here because you want me to pat you on the hand and tell you that leaving was easy and just look how happy and well adjusted I am, you've come to the wrong place."

Cam got up and grabbed the other pair of boxers and pulled them on. "I don't want to hear it's easy. I know it's not. I just needed to see that getting out was possible."

John looked him right in the eyes. "It is." John started futzing around the kitchen, signaling in his own way that the conversation was over. Cam didn't bother putting on his pants as he headed out to porch to grab his bag. He didn't know what he was going to do, but wasn't going to go back the SGC. And he was staying at the cabin, at least for tonight.

He was going to start over, and this was the right square one.


End file.
